Hands Up for Trad exists to promote Scottish traditional music and culture through education, information and advocacy. Our core purpose is to promote and shine the spotlight on the diversity of talent in Scotland. Ideally there would be no place for a list promoting the work of women but until true equity and equality exist in our community, we will continue to seek opportunities like International Women’s Day to platform the work, voices and role of women in Scottish music and culture
Launched as part of International Women’s Day celebrations 2023, Hands Up for Trad’s Women in Music and Culture list has been announced to celebrate just some of the women working in Scotland in 2024. We have chosen 12 women who have and are contributing towards Scotland’s rich cultural landscape. Hands Up for Trad aims to recognise the wealth of talent and diversity they all bring through their work.
Simon Thoumire – Creative Director at Hands Up for Trad says “ ….these 12 women of course are just a snapshot of all the many women doing amazing work in our sector but in a world of fast paced and transient news, we wanted to provide platform, where these women can talk about their work and ambitions for the future as we all re-emerge from challenging times….”
Anna-Wendy is an experienced musician and multi-award winning educator with over 15 years working in higher education. As a freelance performer, teacher, composer and event organiser, she has worked with wide range of artists, organisations, community groups, festivals and media in the UK, USA, New Zealand, Australia and Europe.
Cora Bissett is a Scottish theatre director, playwright, actor and musician. As a director she has created Amada, Roadkill, Grit: The Martyn Bennett Story, Glasgow Girls and Room. As an actor she had regular appearances in the television programmes Rab C. Nesbitt and High Times.
Eddi Reader grew up in Glasgow and Irvine, Scotland and it was in those towns that she learned to use music as a vehicle for communicating with others through busking and performing at the local folk clubs. It was the short-lived but warmly remembered Fairground Attraction that really brought her into the limelight and to the attention of a much wider audience, however, it was her subsequent albums which signalled her increasing ability to assimilate different musical styles and make them all very much her own.
Errollyn Wallen CBE
Errollyn Wallen is a multi award-winning Belize-born British composer and performer. Her prolific output includes twenty-two operas and a large catalogue of orchestral, chamber and vocal works which are performed and broadcast throughout the world. She was the first black woman to have a work featured in the Proms and the first woman to receive an Ivor Novello award for Classical Music for her body of work. Errollyn is one of the top 20 most performed living composers of classical music in the world. Errollyn’s book Becoming a Composer was published Faber by November 2023
Gillian is a professional Scottish fiddle player and educator based in Arran, Scotland. As a performer she has worked with many acts and was a founding member of the band Back of the Moon and is currently performing with Rant. She has featured on more than a dozen albums and worked as a session musician with acts such as The Unusual Supsects, Breabach, Treacherous Orchestra, Rachel Sermani, Deaf Shepherd, Mairearad and Anna and Duncan Lyall’s Infinite Reflections. Gillian won the inaugural BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician Award 2001.
Jenna Reid is a Scottish fiddle player who has been described as “…the finest fiddler in Scotland of her generation.” She was born and brought up in the village of Quarff, in the Shetland Islands. Jenna performs with Blazin’ Fiddles and Deaf Shepherd and recently released her first children’s book Telescope, Telescope.
Lesley Shaw is Celtic Connections Festival Manager, Producer, Project Manager, Lecturer, Marketing and Events Outreach Co-ordinator who has worked on events such as the Commonwealth Games, 2023 UCI Cycling World Championships and then presenting the Grit Orchestra at Edinburgh International Festival.
Lori Watson holds the first artistic research and ethnomusicology doctorate in Scotland, where she explored the evolving practices of extended and experimental composition by traditional musicians in Scotland. Lori’s current AHRC-supported research is a continuation of this including the foundation of the first national music collection of ‘beyond-tune’ compositions by traditional musicians in Scotland at the Scottish Music Centre in Glasgow. Lori is a fiddle player, singer and interpreter of Scots and traditional song who also composes instrumental music, songs and innovative works.
Margaret Cameron
Margaret Cameron is Director of Content at MG ALBA and has led Gaelic programming for many years including the launch of BBC ALBA in 2008. Their programming is not just about entertainment; it’s a celebration of all Scotland has to offer. Margaret says that ‘it’s encouraging to see new talent emerging both on-screen and behind the camera across the sector and she for one can’t wait to see the results on BBC ALBA.
Rachel Walker is a singer, songwriter, arranger and educator based in the heart of Lochaber in Scotland’s beautiful West Highlands. At home with both Gaelic and English, she encountered the Gaelic tradition at a young age, after her family moved from Lincolnshire in England to the small village of Kinlochewe in Wester Ross. Rachel recently released Despite the Wind and Rain with fellow musician Aaron Jones and it’s a collection of ten brand new songs celebrating amazing women in Scottish history.
Sheena Wellington is one of Scottish traditional music’s most passionate advocates, an internationally recognised champion of Robert Burns and in her proudest achievement, the singer who will forever be remembered for her stirring singing of A Man’s a Man for a’ That at the Scottish Parliament’s opening in 1999. Sheena has never stopped working to promote Scots song and is currently working the Wighton Heritage Centre in Dundee to promote concerts and the culture of Dundee.
Victoria McNulty is a performance poet and community arts worker from the East End of Glasgow. She has a MA European Civilisations from the University of Glasgow, with an interest in language and heritage in Scotland. Her poetry and short stories have been published in a number of anthologies and her work has featured in a variety of media broadcasts, including BBC Loop, the National Library of Scotland, BBC The Social, The Scottish Poetry Library’s Pass the Mic, and BBC Radio Scotland.
Follow these topics: News, Newsletter, Women in Music